This past week has been very interesting as Fred has worked on the score for Saying Goodbye. Each day he composes music for several scenes and then sends them to us in the afternoon as a QuickTime file. We watch the scenes with the music (and sometimes Jocelyn cries – mission accomplished, Fred!), and then we let it sink in overnight. Each morning we have a conference call with Fred, which he affectionately calls “the Brian and Jocelyn show” (or at least we hope it’s affectionately) where we discuss our thoughts on the latest piece.

It’s a weird process, because Fred is so good at what he does that everything he creates sounds beautiful. But just because it’s beautiful to listen to doesn’t always mean it’s perfect for a particular scene. Fortunately, most of the time the music he creates captures the scene exactly like we imagined it in our heads. There have only been a few spots where we asked him to tweak things, and it can sometimes get a tad bizarre as we try to describe our reactions. For example, in one of the flashbacks we agreed we wanted the music to sound ethereal. But when Fred sent us the section, Brian thought the score sounded “too Asian” whereas Jocelyn thought it sounded “too sci-fi.” So now when we talk about this scene with Fred, we call it the Chinese spaceship scene. It’s a good thing Fred is able to wade through our crazy descriptions to fine tune the music.

We now have a “rough draft” of the score for the entire film. We’re taking some time to let it settle while Fred works on another project he had scheduled. Once we’re sure it’s true love with the score and not just a brief infatuation, Fred will bring in the live musicians. We can’t wait!

Want to hear how things are coming along? Listen to the sample below or play it on YouTube.

Another bonus to finally having picture lock is that we were able to send a copy of the film to the American Humane Association for approval. We had American Humane rep Sharon Wagner on set monitoring all the animal action, so we didn’t think there’d be any surprises. But then again, they might have seen our kitty cat dance video and been scandalized by the abuse that poor Stuffy suffered on set. So we breathed a big sigh of relief today when we got an email from them approving our film and providing us with the coveted American Humane logo. As animal lovers, we are proud to be able to display it in our credits.

Now that we finally have picture lock, we drove up to Charlotte today to meet with Fred Story at Concentrix for our official spotting session for Saying Goodbye. We watched the film with Fred and Anthony Fedele to make sure it was fresh in all of our minds. Then we discussed sound design options with Anthony: where we wanted to hear the cat purr, when we wanted to hear sounds of chatter in the hallways, what pieces of dialog needed to be cleaned up, etc. And since Rebecca Koon lives in Charlotte, she agreed to come to the the studio to redo a line of Alma’s dialog to compensate for one of the cut scenes.

Then poor Fred was locked in a room with us for hours as we went through the movie scene-by-scene talking about the mood of the score for each one. Since neither of us is very musically inclined, we relied on lots of adjectives to describe how we wanted each scene to feel, often sounding like overexcited thesauruses. Fred would absorb what we said and then start talking about which instruments best captured those adjectives.

It was a great collaboration with the three of us bouncing ideas off each other and seeing them improve as each person added their input. We can’t wait to see what magic Fred makes with his music.

It’s taken us a long time to get here, but we finally have picture lock! The edits are complete. The color has been corrected. The credits have been added (and we hope, hope, hope that we have spelled everyone’s name correctly and that we haven’t left anyone off the list). The visual part of the film is DONE! Whoo hoo! So it’s now up to Fred and his Concentrix crew to take over with the audio part of the film.

We kept hearing the same thing from our experts in the film festival world – if we want to give Saying Goodbye the best chance on the festival circuit, it needs a running time of less than fifteen minutes. So we took a deep breath, ignored the sick feeling in our guts, and started cutting again. A few seconds here. A big painful chunk there. A quick trim over there. At some points it almost felt like we were slicing off body parts. But if it didn’t move the story forward, we cut it. We consoled ourselves by saying we can have a deleted scenes section on the DVD.

After the bloody massacre was over, we’d cut more than a minute. The official running time is now 15 minutes and 58 seconds. We just couldn’t make it under that golden fifteen minute threshold without losing vital parts of the story. So we’re hoping that a running time of 15:58 will have that magical psychological effect similar to pricing something at $19.99 rather than twenty bucks.

We definitely learned an important lesson about short films we wish we had known before writing the script – SHORTER IS BETTER!! For all you aspiring independent filmmakers out there, make sure you plan your short to be less than fifteen minutes and within that small window, make it as short as you possibly can while still telling your story.

Here's one of the scenes now on the cutting room floor. :-( You can also view it on YouTube.

It’s kind of exciting to be announcing the winner of our contest right after watching the Emmy Awards. Hopefully we will soon have our own opportunities at various film festivals to experience the thrill of getting all dressed up to anxiously wait for someone on stage to announce our names as winners. In the meantime, the winner of this week’s building buzz contest is . . . PETS inc.

At first glance, this might seem like an unusual winner; however, as embarrassing as it is to admit, not a single person entered the buzz building contest this past week. Whether it was because people were too busy with end-of-summer activities and school starting or maybe because people were already burned out from our earlier contests, we’re not sure. Since there was no one to give the prize to, we first thought about putting the money into our film-festival-entry-fee fund. But then we were inspired by the fact that our feline stars Marmalade and Mason were adopted from animal shelters, so we decided to donate the money to a local shelter.

PETS inc. is an animal shelter down the road from Brian’s house in West Columbia, SC, that does amazing things with very little money. In fact, Jocelyn’s dog and another Rish family dog were lovingly adopted from PETS inc. several years ago. PETS inc. cares for dogs and cats, and while the donation is only a small drop in the giant bucket of need all these shelters face, we know they’ll make the most of it. Hopefully it will help keep an adorable cat alive long enough to be adopted, whether it’s by an animal trainer looking for a new star or a senior citizen looking for some companionship.

And with that, the “trailer celebration” contests are now officially over. A huge thank you to everyone who helped spread the word about Saying Goodbye in any way, shape, or form over this past month!

You all sure made it tough on us! There were such fun taglines to choose from, which ran the gamut from poignant to funny. Thank you so much to the people who participated and came up with such clever and creative taglines. Each of you is a winner in our books, but after much debate we finally decided that the award goes to . . . Adriana for her tagline “Live like you have 9 lives!”

It really captures the movie’s theme of living life to the fullest AND it weaves in a cat reference. That’s a lot to do in six small words – and its short length keeps it catchy and memorable. Congratulations, Adriana, we’ll contact you via email about delivering your Amazon gift card.

So now that we’re entering the last full week of August, what contest do we have in store for our loyal fans? This one is more of a free-for-all that’s about helping us build buzz through your favorite way of reaching people. So Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs: whatever your preferred method, tell people about Saying Goodbye and then tell us what you did.

For each tweet you send, you’ll get 1 entry.

For each post on Facebook or MySpace, you’ll get 1 entry.

If you write a post on your blog, you’ll get 5 entries.

If you utilize another creative method, you’ll get 5 entries.

Whatever method you use, make sure you mention Saying Goodbye and include this link to our trailer: http://bit.ly/CatTrailer.

Then come back to this blog post and in the comments tell us what you did and leave links so we can see all the fun ways Saying Goodbye is being buzzed about. The contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Sunday, August 29th, when we’ll randomly select one winner from all the entries. This lucky winner will receive a $25 Amazon gift card. Click here for all the details.

More hearty thanks to everyone who participated in this week’s Facebook contest. One of the major challenges of independent films (especially shorts) is getting the word out about them. So we truly appreciate everyone who helps us spread the word about Saying Goodbye.

So what exciting contest do we have planned for the third week of our trailer celebration? This time it’s all about creativity.

First a question for you: what do the following phrases have in common?

In space, no one can hear you scream.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

Love means never having to say you’re sorry

They’re here…

These four phrases are examples of famous movie taglines (Alien, Jaws 2, Love Story, Poltergeist). A tagline is a catchy and enticing phrase to sum up the premise, tone, and/or theme of a movie. Most movies have one, but only a few are so memorable they become a part of pop culture.

The current tagline for Saying Goodbye is “The cat foretold their deaths... yet taught them all about living.” And while we really like it, we’re not sure it has that special something that will make people remember it for years to come.

So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to come up with a new tagline for Saying Goodbye. We know it’s a challenge since you haven’t seen the movie yet, but watch the trailer and read the synopsis, then create something that will wow us. Post your new tagline in the comments section below. We will choose our favorite tagline and award the author a $25 Amazon gift certificate. And if you really blow us away, we’ll make it the official tagline for the movie.

You may enter as many taglines as you want. The contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Sunday, August 22nd. Click here for all the details.

Thank you to everyone who participated in last week’s retweet contest! We really appreciate your help spreading the word about the trailer. We’ve been getting great feedback about it; and we’re so thrilled each time someone tells us it gave them goosebumps or made them teary, because that’s how we hoped people would react to it.

So now the big question is… what is the contest for the second week of August? This week it’s all about spreading the word through facebook. All you have to do is go to the Saying Goodbye facebook page and both share and like any of our posts that have the Saying Goodbye trailer attached to them. We'll be adding multiple FB posts with the trailer linked to them throughout the week, so share and like them all to increase your chances of winning. The contest ends at 11:59pm EST on Sunday, August 15th, when we’ll randomly select one winner from all the participants. This lucky winner will receive a $25 Blockbuster gift card. Click here for all the details.

At long last, it’s finally here – the premiere of the Saying Goodbyetrailer!

Extra special thanks to Fred Story and his team at Concentrix for the poignant musical score. It really sets the mood, and this sneak peek (uhh… listen?) makes us even more eager to start the film’s scoring process in September.

To celebrate the trailer’s debut (and to help promote it), we ran contests throughout the month of August. Each week we featured a new contest with groovy prizes. We had fun with the contests and are sad they are over - find out how they turned out on our blog.

As part of all the trailer excitement, we also entered the Saying Goodbye trailer in the International Movie Trailer Contest. If you have a spare moment, we'd be very grateful if you voted for us. Click here, then type saying goodbye in the Title search box and hit Enter. Our trailer should appear and then you can vote for it. Thank you!

So, what do you think of the trailer? Click on the comments and let us know.